While Caroline and George expressed nothing but sympathy in public for their daughter-in-law, in private they thought she was not sufficiently grateful for their willingness to leave baby Augusta in her care. This they were by no means obliged to do. There was considerable precedent for the children of princes being removed from their parents’ household at the instruction of the reigning monarch; it was one such event – the removal of James, Duke of York’s children, Anne and Mary, to Richmond in the 1670s – that set Elizabeth Villiers on the path to her royal affair and eventually to Cliveden. George and Caroline also doubted that their daughter-in-law’s submissiveness was entirely sincere, and their scepticism was, in part, justified. Though Augusta was young and familiar with the rituals of subservience, she knew that her future rested in the hands of her husband, and that a dutiful and supportive consort would strengthen his position as Prince of Wales and, ultimately, as ruler of Great Britain.
The final step in the family breach, and one that many courtiers were keen to avoid, was the full separation of the two courts. Some courtiers, in particular Robert Walpole, counselled against this, fearing that Frederick’s popularity would increase in response to what would inevitably be perceived as an act of aggression, but the case for separation eventually won out. The king made it clear that he would not receive anyone who was also attending on his son. Aristocrats who had previously hedged their bets would now be forced to choose sides in the quarrel.
There were obvious attractions to the court of Frederick and Augusta over that of Frederick’s parents. The main audience room at George and Caroline’s court was the drawing room, which by the early 18th century had come to replace the privy chamber as the main site of interaction between the king and his trusted courtiers. During the 18th century the privy chamber became a less exclusive domain and, in response to this, the drawing room emerged as a new, more select space. George and Caroline’s drawing rooms were notoriously dull, with the king’s ‘stiff and formal manner’ inducing in attendees ‘that restraint which they saw he was under himself’.19 While he was relatively at ease in the company of women, the king’s reticence and insistence on formal etiquette gave him an air of haughtiness around men.
George and Caroline both had their own drawing rooms. At a typical function the attendees would form a circle around which the king or queen would move, sometimes engaging in brief conversation with those they passed. These evenings could be long and stiflingly tedious, made worse by the fact that it was forbidden to sit down in the presence of the monarch. Those who were not in conversation with the host generally indulged in small talk or, as Lord Chesterfield called it, ‘a court jargon, a chit chat, which turns upon trifles’.20 The ever-stoic Queen Caroline was even overheard complaining of fatigue at one drawing room, sending a message ‘to the King to beg he would retire, for she was unable to stand any longer’.21
Nevertheless, Walpole’s fears about a mass desertion turned out to be exaggerated. Despite the allure of Frederick’s alternative court, people generally chose to remain with the reigning monarch. Frederick found himself surrounded by an increasingly small opposition group that became ever more strident. His appointment of the Tory politician George Lyttelton as his secretary caused a good deal of unease among his dwindling moderate Whig supporters, as ‘there was nobody more violent in the Opposition, nor anybody a more declared enemy to Sir Robert Walpole’.22
Though tales of the growing rift circulated widely in political circles, some effort was made to keep them away from the press: Sir Benjamin Keene, a British diplomat in Spain, was sent details of exchanges between George and Frederick along with the instruction not to share them with anyone else. Nevertheless, similar unedifying details somehow reached the editor of The Gentleman’s Magazine, who could not resist publishing them. The same burgeoning press that had produced lavish coverage of Frederick and Augusta’s wedding was also becoming confident enough to print stories that reflected less well on the royal family.
There were risks associated with printing this sort of contentious material. Despite the absence of any statutory prepublication censorship of the press, opposition papers did face serial prosecutions that gave editors reason to pause for thought before publishing. At the time, judicial action was not seen as an unduly censorious measure, but as an essential defence against factious or seditious comment. In cases where published material verged on the treasonous, sanctions were severe. After Nathaniel Mist’s weekly journal published a pro-Jacobite satire in 1728, the Whig government ordered many presses to be destroyed, and both Mist and the satire’s author, the Duke of Wharton, had to flee the country. Papers were also vulnerable to sudden and direct political interference to prevent their distribution, as happened on the eve of both the 1734 and the 1754 elections, when the government ordered the post office not to carry any copies of the London Evening Post. The extent of this interference was, however, tempered by ministerial fears that frequent trials would turn printers and newspapermen into martyrs. ‘Liberty of the press’ was already a familiar catch phrase, and failed prosecutions risked simply generating publicity for the opposition media.
Now that they were no longer able to stay at St James’s or Hampton Court, Frederick and Augusta needed new residences both in London and in the country. For a London home, Frederick had long had his eyes on Southampton House, but despite ‘having given unregarded hints to the Duke of Bedford’, who owned the property, he wasn’t invited to buy it.23 The Duke and Duchess of Norfolk were more forthcoming with their residence, Norfolk House, though such was the fear of being caught on the wrong side of the Hanover rift that the duke was not willing to sell to the prince until the duchess had attended the queen and asked her whether the sale ‘would be disagreeable to her and the king’.24 The queen assured the duchess that it would not be disagreeable, and thanked her for her civility.
And then the country house: Cliveden’s Thames-side location made it very attractive to Frederick, who loved the river, and although the proximity to his parents’ residence at Windsor was not an unmitigated attraction, it was symbolic of his position as king-in-waiting. The house was modest compared to any of the royal palaces or the grand London residences, and this suited Frederick and Augusta well: according to Hervey, the couple’s finances were in worse shape than ever before, and besides, they wanted somewhere on a more familial scale. Because their houses at Kew and Cliveden were directly on the river, a barge transported their possessions between the two.
The river was not just a functional thoroughfare for the prince and princess. Like his grandfather George I, who famously commissioned Handel’s Water Music to be performed for him during trips along the river, Frederick formed an attachment to the Thames. He often cruised along the river to one of his favourite haunts, Spring Gardens at Vauxhall. In 1732 Jonathan Tyers, the new manager, redesigned the gardens, adding long gravel walks and a panoply of enticing features such as obelisks, grand ornamental arches, painted scenery on canvas, a hermit’s cave, and a water mill with its own waterfall. Alongside these attractions, concerts, dances, masked balls, fireworks displays, ballets and horse shows were regularly on offer. Events at the gardens were incredibly popular: thousands attended a public rehearsal of Handel’s fireworks music on 21 April 1749, and Thomas Arne’s ‘Rule, Britannia!’ was a concert staple.
Beyond these entertainments, Spring Gardens also offered friends a place to gossip, lovers a setting in which to conduct illicit affairs, and poorer visitors the opportunity to spot famous beauties and minor politicians. The redesigned gardens proved extremely popular, drawing the crowds away from the pleasure gardens in St James’s where Anna Maria had inspired the ardour of so many Restoration rakes. They also attracted hordes of commoners, much to the concern of the management, who in June 1736 introduced a ticketing system to prevent undesirables ‘intermixing with those Persons of Quality’.25 Frederick marked the opening of the gardens with a ceremonial entry via the Thames in his William Kent barge and, from 1738 onward
s, Frederick and Augusta made many well-publicised journeys to Vauxhall.26
Chapter 5
THE QUEEN IS DEAD, LONG LIVE THE QUEEN
ON 9 NOVEMBER 1737, while inspecting the new library at St James’s Palace, which had been designed by William Kent, Queen Caroline was taken ill.1 At first her ailment was thought to be a more severe recurrence of the gout that had afflicted her on several previous occasions. George, sensing that the situation was more serious than that, was distraught, and refused to leave her side; he even slept on the queen’s bed in his nightgown.2 Hervey was quick to prescribe a cocktail of patent medicines that he had found helpful in the past, including ‘Daffy’s Elixir’ and ‘Sir Walter Raleigh’s cordial’, but the queen’s fever only worsened.3 The royal physicians ordered the standard treatments of the time, bloodletting and induced vomiting. After Caroline had been in bed for several days, it transpired that her illness was, in fact, the result of a hernia, which had developed during one of her pregnancies.4 Her condition was far worse than had initially been realised and could only be ameliorated by an operation that was in itself life-threatening.
Upon hearing news that his mother was dying, Frederick rushed to London, but George would not even entertain the notion of receiving his son:
‘If the puppy should, in one of his impertinent affected airs of duty and affection, dare to come to St James’s, I order you to go to the scoundrel and tell him I wonder at his impudence for daring to come here; that he has my orders already, and knows my pleasure, and bid him go about his business; for his poor mother is not in a condition to see him act false, whining, cringing tricks now, nor am I in a humour to bear his impertinence; and bid him trouble me with no more messages, but get out of my house.’5
The queen, too, was unforgiving to the last. When George told his wife that he had refused their son entry to the palace and offered to reverse this decision if she so desired, Caroline replied: ‘I am so far from desiring to see him, that nothing but your absolute command could make me assent to it.’6
The last few days of Caroline’s life were tinged with macabre comedy. The king and queen’s deathbed discussion about mistresses was a perfect travesty of William III and Mary’s in 1694: when Caroline urged George to seek another wife, he responded amid tears ‘Non – j’aurai des maîtresses’ (‘No – I shall have mistresses’).7 Sharp as ever, Caroline quipped: ‘Dieu! Cela n’empêche pas’ (‘God! That needn’t stop you’). She died on 20 November 1737, unreconciled with her son. Her death plunged George into profound grief that even Hervey, who was generally rather critical of the king, conceded showed ‘a tenderness of which the world thought him utterly incapable’.8 When Egmont attended the court in January 1738, he commented that George ‘stayed not two minutes out, and had grief fixed on his face’.9
Caroline’s death left Augusta in a uniquely influential position – she was now the only royal consort in the realm. Her enhanced role was reflected in portraiture: in 1739, Jean-Baptiste van Loo, who was known for his portraits of male political leaders, depicted Augusta sitting regally surrounded by her children and entourage. In a little over a year, the humble girl from Saxe-Gotha had risen to become, if not an actual queen, at least the undisputed first lady of the nation. At her ‘courts’ of Norfolk House, Kew and Cliveden, she and Frederick entertained relentlessly, receiving a wide cross-section of friends from the worlds of politics, literature and art. One of their guests was Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, who was now 77, and had not become any less cantankerous with age: among her nicknames were ‘Old Mount Aetna’, the ‘Beldam of Bedlam’ and ‘Her Graceless’. Augusta and the ageing duchess struck up an unlikely friendship: surprisingly, given her own behaviour, Sarah saw great value in Augusta’s propriety. ‘I think her conversation is much more proper to a drawing room than the wise Queen Caroline’, she wrote to a friend, alluding to the late queen’s well-known prurience.10
Frederick and Augusta did not even pretend to grieve for Caroline. This was particularly noticeable in a period when mourning was a very serious and prolonged process, with forms of grieving determined by the Chamberlain’s Office and published for the public at large. The death of George I in 1727 set the pattern for 18th-century mourning, which in the case of a royal death passed through three ‘degrees’ over the course of at least a year. The first degree of mourning was the strictest and not only required that various black materials be used in clothes, shoes, hats, fans and gloves, but also that shiny surfaces such as buckles, buttons, or rivets in coaches, be covered. Mourning was so stringently observed that royal deaths generated huge demand for black material, in particular Norwich crepe, and seriously dented the income of those who manufactured colourful silks and ribbons. In 1709, during the two-year mourning for Queen Anne’s husband, Prince George of Denmark, silk manufacturers protested to Parliament that if mourning was declared for a fourth fashion season their industry would not recover.11 Perhaps the most succinct expression of Frederick and Augusta’s disregard for mourning convention was the design of the new barge they commissioned in the spring of 1738, less than six months after the queen’s death. The inside of the barge was not black, nor even dark, but bright green.12
By late 1737, Cliveden was being prepared for its royal occupants. In October, Augusta appointed the married couple Mr and Mrs Sallier as porter and housekeeper respectively and, in January of the following year, it was reported in the press that the house was ‘getting ready for his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales’ Residence next summer’.13 Although Cliveden would principally serve as a summer residence, the Wales family also visited the property at other times of year. In March 1738 their entourage arrived ‘in a Coach and Six, attended by another Coach and Six, with the Ladies of the Bedchamber in Waiting, and Sir William Irby Bart, her Royal Highness’s Vice Chamberlain, and six Servants on Horseback’, and they returned again at the end of April for a month-long visit.14
On 4 June 1738, at Norfolk House in London, Augusta gave birth to her second child, the future George III. Not long afterwards a ‘machine chair’ was made for the baby prince and his older sister, so that they could take the air in the Cliveden gardens. The chair, which was said to exhibit the ‘most exquisite Workmanship’, was based on one ‘belonging to the Children of France’ and was ‘sent from Mr. Bassnet’s’ shop in Piccadilly.15 On 1 August, two years before the momentous premiere of Alfred, the little Princess Augusta’s first birthday was also celebrated at Cliveden, with a ‘grand entertainment to several persons of distinction’.16 It was a happy time for the family. With Augusta’s help, Frederick was able to overcome the vicissitudes of his upbringing to become a communicative, affectionate father. ‘My dear children,’ he wrote to them, ‘you have given me too much joy today.’17
While Frederick and Augusta doted on their own heirs, the prince had also facilitated a limited reconciliation with his father. In the general election of 1741, Frederick achieved a parliamentary group of 25 and his members contributed to Walpole’s downfall the following year. After this, Frederick formed a partnership with William Pulteney, who succeeded in negotiating the long-sought rise in the prince’s allowance to £100,000 per year. But as soon as the question of finances was solved, Frederick abandoned his role in opposition politics, much to the chagrin of his former allies, who had been committed to the patriotic political agenda of the Country Party movement. Frederick’s willingness to make peace with his father in return for an increased allowance damaged the reputation of the opposition. After campaigning so vocally against the venality of the court, they now looked like any other political faction, whose support could be purchased for the right price. Meanwhile, in a show of goodwill to George, Frederick appeared at a levee at St James’s Palace, where his father politely inquired about the health of Augusta. The short and stilted conversation marked a temporary thaw in the Hanoverian cold war.
Meanwhile, the Wales’s own family was growing: Edward was born in March 1739; Elizabeth, physically deformed but muchloved, in
January 1741; and William Henry in November 1743. In pride of place at the nursery at Cliveden was Prince George’s cradle, which had a crown carved in its head, and a quilt of yellow silk damask, to match the room’s curtains.18 George Wickes, a well-known silversmith based in Threadneedle Street in London, was commissioned to make not only silver toys for the children, but also tiny silver spoons and forks, mugs and porringers for use on formal occasions. Later, Augusta’s English teacher, the Swiss pastor and scholar Caspar Wettstein, acquired maps of Europe for the infant George, to teach him the geography of Europe.19
Preparing a king for his rule at a time when infant mortality was still high involved making decisions about his health to ensure he reached his majority. Indeed Augusta was preoccupied with the health of all of her children and, in particular, with the question of how to protect them from smallpox. The previous two decades had seen the tentative adoption of inoculation, a process popularised in England by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. In 1717 Lady Montagu, whose husband was the British ambassador to Turkey, had come across the method in Constantinople, and wrote of it enthusiastically to her friend in London, Sarah Chiswell. ‘There is a set of old women, who make it their business to perform the operation, every autumn in the month of September, when the great heat is abated,’ she wrote. ‘People send to one another to know if any of their family has a mind to have the smallpox: they make parties for the purpose, and when they are met (commonly 15 or 16 together), the old woman comes with a nutshell full of the matter of the best sort of smallpox, and asks what vein you please to have opened.’ Montagu continued: ‘She immediately rips open that you offer her, with a large needle (which gives you no more pain than a common scratch) and puts into the vein, as much matter as can lie upon the head of her needle.’20
The Mistresses of Cliveden: Three Centuries of Scandal, Power and Intrigue in an English Stately Home Page 19
